Chardon High School shooting

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the school shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio. I waited to do this post until the suspect was named. I’ll get to that in a little bit.

At 7:40am local time a gunman opened fire in the school’s cafeteria striking 5 students, 4 male and 1 female. Since the story first broke one of the male students has died from his injuries. The 17-year-old suspect later surrendered to two civilians about a half of a mile from the school.

The suspect has been identified by witnesses as T.J. Lane. Lane is said to have posted the above picture to Twitter and the Chatroulette-like site Omegle on Sunday. Another one of the pics, which you can see here courtesy of Steve Huff, allegedly shows Lane holding up a piece of paper with yesterday’s date and the name of the high school on it. And of course some media outlets are already saying that he was bullied. I’ll reserve judgement on that until I hear more but I am always skeptical of those claims because in most school shooting cases it turns out to be untrue.

What I’d like to know is the parental situation. For example how was this kid able to obtain the guns seen in the pictures. Not to mention the fact that if he posted the alleged pictures on Twitter how did they go unnoticed by just about everyone. Or who knew and didn’t say anything.

I guess I also have to repeat myself once again and remind people that murder is not the proper response to being bullied even if this kid was. And I also have to remind high school kids that high school is just a blip on the timeline of your existence. Not to mention that any of these shootings does nothing to solve the bullying problem in our schools. Instead it just makes the schools worry about who the next shooter is going to be.

I’ll be posting more on this as details become available and time allows.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims.

Please do not post links to the Twitter or Facebook accounts of the suspects or the victims. I ask this so their friends who may have not had anything to do with the shooting are not harassed.

UPDATE 2:29PM: The student who died has been identified as Daniel Parmentour. His family released this statement…

“We are shocked by this senseless tragedy. Danny was a bright young boy who had a bright future ahead of him. The family is torn by this loss. We ask that you respect our privacy during this difficult time.”

BULL. SHIT. Chardon is a rural town, and it sounds like the one I grew up in. Rural towns aren’t as safe as even their own residents like to think. There is an undercurrent of violence, even there, plus people tend to have more access to guns. The ONLY thing keeping people safe out in the middle of nowhere is distance from everyone else. It can happen anywhere, and at least, my school covered all of the violence up and I suspect a lot of other schools do as well. So fuck anyone who says “that just doesn’t happen here.” It can.

Also, more articles that have come out about this say that while Lane was an outcast, he wasn’t bullied. He was probably another Eric Harris type that thought he was hot shit and so above everything he might as well have fun shooting it. Now an innocent person is dead and four more are in the hospital fighting for their lives because of some punk-ass who desperately wanted some kind of sick fame.